The development of the Second Action plan 2027- 2032 creates an opportunity to dig deeper into the drivers of domestic and family violence and to better understand how pervasive and embedded patriarchal ideologies, behaviours and enabling systems are within all facets of society, including governments, statutory authorities, schools, workplaces, sporting environments and online.
The Second Action Plan needs to embed innovative changes to systemic ways of thinking and working so that siloed program design can be replaced by integrated person-centred systems and place-based collaborations. By codesigning solutions with the expertise of people who have lived experiences of DFV, victim-survivors should only need to tell their story once and be able to navigate a streamlined trajectory of safety and recovery.
DVNSW calls on Governments to make a purposeful decision to undertake a whole of system change that requires the current system to be interrogated holistically, through the eyes of people with living and lived experiences, to understand its failings and how to integrate the current fragmented approach to safety.
DVNSW additionally calls for:
- Governments to effectively resource the implementation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander National Action Plan to end violence against women and children.
- Governments to ensure that the second action plan intersects, is informed by and uplifts the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan.
- Governments to resource increased capacity for DFV specialist refuges to be able to meet the demand for safe, inclusive and culturally responsive accommodation so victim-survivors are not blocked from safety by having nowhere to go.
- Governments to ensure regional, rural and remote service commissioning includes financial loading for regional, rural, remote and very remote service delivery to meet the needs of DFV victim-survivors and reduce the disparity between available women’s safety supports between metro and regional, rural, remote, and very remote regions.
- The Federal Government continue to fund WESNET’s Safe Connections (Safer Technology for Women) program and the Keeping women safe in the home program beyond 2027.